


a fronte praecipitium, a tergo lupi

by prototype_malice



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Lonely Stiles Stilinski, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Scott is a Good Friend, and I will die on that hill, everyone gets a hug 2k20, suck my ass
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-17
Updated: 2020-06-17
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:48:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24767995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prototype_malice/pseuds/prototype_malice
Summary: A prompt fill for a delightful prompt from the lovely psiikj4k’s hurt/comfort prompt collection:“It began after the pseudo-sacrifice.When the Nogitsune was in control it was blissfully silent. Once it's gone, taking a part of Stiles with it leaving him hollow and aching and pack-less.It comes back with a vengeance.The Nemeton calls to him and Stiles is not sure how much longer he can ignore it.”
Relationships: Scott McCall & Stiles Stilinski
Comments: 2
Kudos: 36
Collections: Angst and Hurt/Comfort Prompts





	a fronte praecipitium, a tergo lupi

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [angstandhcprompts](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/angstandhcprompts) collection. 



> **Prompt:**
> 
> It began after the pseudo-sacrifice.  
> When the Nogitsune was in control it was blissfully silent. Once it's gone, taking a part of Stiles with it leaving him hollow and aching and pack-less.  
> It comes back with a vengeance.  
> The Nemeton calls to him and Stiles is not sure how much longer he can ignore it.
> 
> Disclaimers:  
> 1\. This is my first work in this fandom and I just watched the first episode of season 6a a few hours ago, so my characterization might be a little suss. Ah, well! Headcanons are better.  
> 2\. Those of you who know me from the Discovery fandom may remember that I have a nasty habit of posting when the time is most succulent for my late-night ravings, which means you should have low expectations for me posting things. I try, but I’m a “human” disaster like the rest of us.  
> 3\. Scott McCall is a good goddamn friend in this and all my other WIPs that I’m saving for a rainy day. I will die on this hill, and it will be glorious.  
> 4\. I don’t own any of these characters or the show or the canon or the *snore*. Fortunately for film studies dissertations about how queerbaiting affects minority representation and unfortunately for us, a goddamn coward by the name of Jeff Davis does.  
> 5\. Arden Cho and Kira Yukimura deserved better than they got and I will DIE ON THAT HILL.
> 
> Important stuff: some mentions of that one character death at the end of 3b, not sure whether that’s still considered a spoiler. Probably less than canon-typical levels of horror and violence, but I’m gonna mention blood and touch super gently upon the slightly deranged tone of 3b. If you’re uncomfortable with any of those things, stay safe.

Scott knows how his face looks when there’s blood on his teeth.

Once they were two boys, two brothers, and one had hopped over the stream and dared the other to cross.

But then the world frosted over as the little brother hesitated, and when he came back to the stream in the spring the world had thawed and there was a rushing river where he had been, and no one could stand in that chasm and step across.

They don’t talk to each other after the Nogitsune.

That winter had been so quiet. Outside, there was cold, but he was living in that moment just inside the door, warm as he fell asleep by the window watching the snow.

The snow melted, the rivers roared, and the gentle snowflakes turned into rain. It started raining in March and it rained all spring. The rain is cold, but it isn’t cold enough. When you come inside from the cold, you’re warm. When you come inside from the rain, you’re just wet.

Scott knows how he looks when there’s blood on his hands.

Stiles knows it, too. He keeps washing them, scraping them raw in water so hot it steams, because when it was cold people bled. He can feel it on his hands, on his face, in his mouth, and in the dark when he lies awake and has to confront the endless horror that he’s not dreaming, he can taste the blood on his tongue.

No one has been by to see him.

He hasn’t been doing much worth seeing.

He lies in his bed and stares at the ceiling until the sun is gone and he’s staring at nothing, and then he stares until it comes up again.

His dad told him that if he didn’t sleep he’d start hallucinating.

It’s okay, he thinks. He can always see the blood on his hands. He doesn’t know if it’s real.

It’s okay, because he’s already paid for what he’s done. He died a week before he did it, let the world take the price of his sins and claw it from his chest to eat it, to consume it and bury it where it would never return.

It’s okay, he thinks. The balance is good. He is already dead. Now he just has to live with it.

There is a tree in the forest where nobody goes.

It is ancient, as ancient as the sun and the rain and the little stream that is dead and gone.

When you wander in the forest, because you have nowhere to go, it beckons. It is lonely, too. It wants a lonesome traveler to have and hold and be lonely with, and he is just lonesome enough.

He wanders in the forest often, because he has nowhere to go. It calls to him and he follows, because it is lonely, too, and he is so lonely where he wanders in the forest all by himself.

The tree is lonely because it was cut down in a time when the rain was hesitant and the sun was spry and youthful and the cosmic and ancient things have been forgotten. It is the only one left of his kind. No one else remembers but the tree.

He understands. He is the only one left of him.

Nemeton is its name. When it asks for his he does not answer, he does not know.

It’s okay, the tree thinks, because when you’re a lonesome traveler in the forest you don’t have to know your name.

He thinks he is sad. He should be.

If you are sad, the tree says, why don’t you cry? I wish I knew how to cry.

I wish I did, too, he says. He has not cried. He does not know how he should cry when his brother knows what his face looks like when there’s blood on his teeth.

Come sit a while in the wind and the dust with me, the tree says. The wind is nothing. It is as little as the rain. The wind and the dust cannot change anything.

He sits in the dust and the wind with the tree. He feels no more or less lonely as before. Perhaps he was supposed to sit in the wind first.

When they have sat for a while, he wanders again. He will come back to sit with the tree in another while, but for now he will wander in the forest until they are ready to sit and be lonely together. After that they will be ready to part again, and then to it together and be lonesome.

Spring will come and go again, beyond the place where people wander when they are lost. There will be frost where there were flowers and again flowers where there was frost. The river will rage in the rain and the river will sleep in the soft sunshine. For him there will be no spring, though come one frost and come one year the wolf may cease from its grieving.

The tree calls to him again, and he comes and goes. One day he will stay and pay the ferryman his dues, will cross the river where it may go now and know that his brother doesn’t wait for him.

For now, he will lie in his bed and watch as the last of the sunset slips away and the first of the sunrise trickles through his window.

“Have you seen Scott recently?”

He hardly hears it when his father asks him.

He wants to say that Scott knows what his face looks like when there’s blood on his teeth.

“No,” he says instead, and goes to find the tree.

Come, it beckons him, but do not stay a while.

It’s okay, he thinks. He has nowhere else to go.

He approaches the tree that was, and sits upon it and feels the wind. He is not so lonely here. If he wanted to, he could slip away, could stand and take a step into the wind. Perhaps he should.

But first, there is a price to pay, so he spills his blood for the tree.

Thank you, it says.

He smiles and turns away, feels the wind rushing and the rivers roaring and the ancient things long forgotten at his fingertips. There has always been something in the air here, something he could almost remember. Now he has a name for it.

Now he has his name.

That something is called magic.

He takes a step into the wind, and Scott pulls him back and away from the edge.

The wind has died down and the tree is just a stump in the forest, and Scott is holding him as he cries.

Thank you, the tree whispers, and is gone. Now we know how to cry.

Scott sees the blood on his hands, and it is his own blood that drips from his wrists and which the world consumed as payment. He is not seeing that old blood that could never be washed clean, but the new chasm where the old stream once was and where the rain carved it away.

Scott takes his hands as he holds him and his veins are black as he takes more.

Stiles didn’t even notice he was crying until the pain was gone and he wasn’t empty anymore.

“I missed you,” he tells his brother.

“I love you,” his brother whispers back.

They stay there a while, holding each other as they cry, and when they make to go, they are hand in hand. Stiles can feel the wind at his back and it is the rivers that stain his hands and the moment before rain he can taste in his mouth.

**Author's Note:**

> If you read Latin, gold star! ⭐️
> 
> If you’re a pleb, title means “at the front a precipice, at the back, wolves”. I will not apologize for translation errors because, like a true AP Latin student, I didn’t make any.
> 
> If you enjoy my writing and want to request a work in this fandom, I’m down for pretty much anything. Feel free to leave a comment, shoot me a message, or send me an anonymous ask on my Tumblr (linked on my profile), if you’re a coward.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
